soft fruit

How many soft fruit bushes could I grow in an 8ft x 3ft south facing bed ?
I have no experience at all with soft fruit. All advice welcome, thanks.

 

We get about 4 to 5 Raspberry plants in our 8ft beds.
Think for Currant bushes you will be looking about 2 or 3 plants, Blueberries about 3 or 4 plants.

You can plant closer but you will get smaller crops from each plant.

 

Thanks for your reply Ricky101. Interesting, Must give it a 'good dose of thinking'
It's either soft fruit or potatoes.
decisions,decisions !

 

You could have 3-4 Blueberry bushes in that space - but they'd need to be in pots of ericaceous compost and they need rainwater.
I have 3 that are about 8 years old now.
Between June and October I've harvested a good 10Kg from the 3 of them.
Given the price difference between spuds and blueberries - I chose the blueberries.
I did have several veg beds, but due to slugs, caterpillars, aphids etc etc I turned all the beds into soft fruit beds. I gave up on strawberries as the slugs got to them before I did, but the rest of the soft fruits are bug free and don't need much maintenance.
Last year's berry harvest was 27Kg

 

And judging by the cost per kilo (Abel and Cole selling them for £43.60 per kilo just now) that makes quite a tidy sum, @Pete8.

Of course, if you hate blueberries….

 

Definitely fruit oven veg for value, and benefits from being really fresh.
You could try Raspberries along one long edge and a couple of fruit bushes in front. Raspberry like slightly acidic soil too. In my view summer ones have more flavour but Autumn ones are easier to manage.

 

I can't believe anyone buys them for that price! I rarely pay more than £9 per kilo and I buy them all year round.

 

Blueberry price at market seems to be about 8-12£/kg over the year for bluebs but raspberries are almost always above this

redcurrants seem absurdly priced this year, not sure why. sainsburies is selling them for 26£/kg and ive seen none anywhere else :(

I had a redcurrant but it died, I think something rotted the roots, I think they need well draining soil

 

I never see any type of currants on sale. I believe Ribena buys up all the blackcurrants.
I have two blackcurrant bushes that are a couple of years old, they both fruited this year for the first time. I have just bought a redcurrant and a whitecurrant from Morrisons for £2 each.

A couple of years ago I bought two gooseberry bushes from the nearly-dead shelf at Morrisons for 30p each. They were supposed to be one green and one red, but they have turned out both to be red. Had a nice crop this year and since they are another fruit that's hard to find in the shops I think they are well worth growing. The spines are lethal though!

 

2£ each?? when was this. ill go asap if its still up

yes its hard to pick gooseberries. ironically my mother has one where the leaves get devoured by sawfly before the berries are ripe every year, making them easier to harvest

 

It was last week sometime. They are very small, as you might expect! They also had tayberries and thornless blackberries.